Holding on to Life, by Rafi Eitan. (source: SITA)
A FORMER agent of the Israeli secret service Mossad, Rafi Eitan, has donated one of his own creations to the Danubiana Museum of Modern Art near Bratislava. Eitan, a politician and a past cabinet minister, decided to donate his bronze sculpture of a hand called “Holding on to Life” to Danubiana because he grew to like the museum during his visits to Slovakia, Zuzana Kizáková of the Israeli Embassy told the SITA newswire.
The Dutch patron and co-founder of Danubiana, Gerard H. Meulensteen, and the gallery’s owner, Vincent Polakovič, were given the sculpture by Alexander Ben-Zvi, the Israeli Ambassador to Slovakia. The sculpture will become part of the international collection at the Danubiana.
Eitan, who is 84, rose to fame as a Mossad agent and in 1960 he was the commander of the operation that captured Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann in Argentina, one of the greatest triumphs of the Israeli secret service.
Kizáková told SITA that Eitan had always admired the art of sculpting but that in the environment of the kibbutz where he grew up and in the secret service where he worked, he never had a chance to get closer to the art form. In the 1960s when he was deployed as a secret agent in Paris he got to know modern art better and learned to love it.
“When I was in Paris, I started to create sculptures and statues myself. Enchanted by Picasso, Arp and Giacometti, I followed them,” he said about his works which include dozens of bronze and iron works depicting long, slim figures, sitting cats and Venuses, and industrial statuettes made of screws or chains.
